Committee narrows noncompete change to health-care providers, defers final S.230 vote to tomorrow

The Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs Committee signaled conditional support for a house amendment to S.230 that narrows a proposed prohibition on contracts not to compete so it applies only to health-care providers, and the chair said the committee will take a final vote on the labor bill at 8:30 a.m. tomorrow.

The committee’s legislative counsel told members the house rewrote the provision to create a separate health-care-provider section rather than a broad ban on noncompete agreements. Counsel said enforcement for claims under that section would be placed under the enforcement provisions of the Fair Employment Practices Act. A representative of the Vermont Medical Society said the language was “very broad” but that the society and other health-care associations had worked on the text and that hospitals do not generally use noncompetes. “This was really consensus language among a number of health care associations,” the representative said.

Members pressed staff to clarify the scope of the term “health-care provider” and whether the change would reach licensed nursing assistants through physicians; counsel said the bill relies on an existing Vermont statutory definition intended to cover most who provide health-care services. Advocates said the provision is aimed primarily at out-of-state staffing contracts (for example, traveling nurses or locum tenens) whose employer-level noncompetes can prevent local hiring.

The committee also discussed a late house request to address solicitations in parking lots at Department of Corrections facilities. The chair said Wanda Manole, commissioner of Buildings & General Services, has offered to convene VSEA and DOC representatives to develop a recommendation and that the committee lacked time to implement an immediate statutory fix; the chair asked members to treat the facilitated conversation as the path forward.

The committee removed the broader noncompete discussion from today’s agenda and agreed to vote on S.230 first thing tomorrow morning. The chair said the committee would return with final language after members have had an opportunity to review the amendments and any remaining drafting issues.